A Tourism Framework for Community-Driven Sustainable Livelihood: A Comparative Study

Abstract

Participatory approaches in community-driven projects are usually connected to sustainable livelihoods. Previous studies have focussed more on community-based tourism (CBT), where private investors, donors and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are the main stakeholders, therefore, they manage and control such CBT projects. In such cases, the communities are treated as a homogenous alliance and are negligibly involved in the planning and management of the projects. This has resulted in communities not fully benefiting from tourism attractions, which are mostly located in rural areas. Communities living adjacent to tourist attractions, hence, tend not to utilize these resources for their livelihoods. Considerable studies have identified the main reasons for this situation as being poor planning and management of tourism projects, leading to the lack of participation by the communities. While it is a fact that many community tourism projects experience poor management, the institutional structures and processes through which these projects function are hardly investigated. Community participation in the development of tourism projects does not take place in a vacuum, communities are, usually, motivated by an enabling atmosphere, for example, adequate capital, to play an active part in the development of a project. The nature of a motivating capital that would influence communities to participate in tourism projects, however, is yet to be examined. Previous studies have substantially documented various benefits of tourism to communities, however, limited studies have focused on the utilization of resources from tourism activities, for communities’ livelihoods. The purpose of this study was to examine the socio-economic contributions of the tourism projects to communities’ livelihoods, with the goal of developing a framework that can provide direction for meaningful community participation in projects aimed at sustainable livelihoods. To achieve this aim, the study investigated two community-driven tourism projects - one in Makuleke, (South Africa) and the other one in Kisumu (Kenya). The two study areas were compared to analyze the impacts of tourism projects on communities’ livelihoods. The enabling capital that pulled others to enable the communities to participate in tourism projects, was also identified. The study also critiqued the institutional structures and processes in these two tourism projects. The study surveyed 121 households, both in South Africa and Kenya, using case study strategy and a hybrid research design. Participants were selected using both purposive and simple random sampling procedures. The quantitative data collected was analysed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences Software (SPSS version 2.5), while the qualitative data was analysed using Atlas.ti version 8 software techniques, such as coding themes and building networks. This research established that the two community-driven tourism projects, in the two areas were operated through different management styles and these influenced the communities’ livelihood outcomes and impacted their lives differently. The Makuleke project focused more on public facility development while the Kisumu project was more about tourism income-generation activities. The results showed that the economic capital was the motivating and enabling factor that produced other capitals for communities’ livelihoods. This was more pronounced in the Kenyan project which concentrated more on tourism income-generation activities. Based on the data collected from the study, a framework was developed that could aid communities’ participation in tourism projects in the two communities and other similar communities around the world. The study contributes to the debates on the institutional structures and processes needed in the Community-driven Tourism Projects (CDTPs), unlike previous studies that have mostly dealt with community-based tourism in protected areas. The study recommends that communities’ full participation in tourism projects is vital for maximum benefits from such projects.